DeCavalcante Family: Still Here For Now

One mafia family that has often been mentioned but tends to remain beneath the shadow of the five New York Families is the Decavalcante family, also known as the New Jersey family.  The FBI claims that it is under the control of the Gambino family.  In the last month or so a number of them have been put away.

The family is named after Simone “Sam” Decavalcante, who took over as boss of the Elizabeth New Jersey faction in 1964. There had been a long string of bosses in the New Jersey area even before Prohibition.  Once Prohibition was in effect there was a lot of money at stake, so they fought a lot of local battles.  When Sam took over the family he consolidated groups and crews, doubling the amount of made men in his family before 1969 when he went to prison.

When he was released, he retired to Florida, remainingl an advisor to the family until the 1990’s. The family has fallen a bit from its heyday. They no longer sit on the Commission and while they work all over the Tri-State area, they do not control rackets like they used to.

One of their soldiers, Jerry Balzano, was caught on video attacking another motorist in a road rage incident a couple of months ago.  Balzano had previously been taken down along with over a hundred other mobsters on Mafia Take Down Day back in 2011.

It seems Jerry and several others smuggled in truckloads of cigarettes and sold them much cheaper as they avoided having to pay the state tax that applied to their sale.  He also helped some guys steal a tax refund check that was worth fifteen thousand dollars.  The indictment also charged him with collecting loan shark loans from a debtor in North Carolina.

He ended up taking a plea for racketeering and serving almost two years in prison.  He was then on supervised release when he was violated for possession of a firearm and sent back to prison for an additional four months.

Four months really does not seem like a lot of time, considering he is a felon.  The new case is all made by him on video and he comes off pretty bad, mostly because of his yelling. It will be interesting to see how much time the judge gives him for this case.

This is the mafia family the Sopranos is supposed to based on, and oddly enough they do behave like a bunch of TV clowns.

This past March, Charles Stango, a capo in the family, pleaded guilty to murder conspiracy and was given ten years.  Six other men, including his son, have all pleaded guilty and are either already serving sentences or will be shortly.

The family has fallen a long way in recent years.  

They used to have a lot of control with the unions for construction projects.  They controlled a number of landfills and other illegal dump sites. In the 1960’s the family ran a twenty million dollar a year gambling business.  Today, they swindle checks and sell cocaine.

New Jersey Fun with the DeCavalcantes

The FBI still goes after Cosa Nostra or mafia families, and in the last few years they have hit the New Jersey-based DeCavalcantes pretty hard.

Last week a judge gave Charles “Beeps” Stango, a capo in the DeCavalcante family, ten years in a case that included murder-for-hire.  

The DeCavalcante crime family is the crime family that the show Sopranos was loosely based on.  Law enforcement now claims that they operate under the Gambino crime family. I laugh out loud when I think about the Sicilians, who run the Gambinos, actually wanting to deal with a bunch of American Cosa Nostra.

Beep’s crew engaged in everything from bookmaking, to loansharking, to selling cocaine and untaxed cigarettes.  The FBI was watching them and intercepted some good wire talk about their drug deals.  One of the conversations they were able to record was one of Beeps talking about the structure of the family and who did what.  It is a very damning recording.  He explains that he goes way back with Goombah Frankie, aka Frank Nigro, who was also taken down in the investigation.  Nigro also happens to be the consigliere of the family.  

Beeps explains to the informant who made the recording what place the consigliere holds in the family.  Equal with the underboss, but a representative of all the men.  

He goes on to explain that if you have a beef, you go to your capo, who takes it to the consigliere, who will settle the dispute.

This is where he tells the informant that the family is under the Gambinos now after being independant since the beginning.

Beeps brags about “planting the family flag,” or setting up crews, in New Orleans, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Beeps then had a beef with another capo and another made guy in his crew.  He told the informant that they were disrespectful to him and the underboss.  He wanted the guy hurt, acid thrown in his face or put in a wheelchair.  

He wanted the informant to use a crew from outside Elizabeth, New Jersey that would not be recognizable to the locals.  He considered throwing “pineapples” (grenades) to blow up the guy.

The informant found two unknown outlaw bikers who would do the job.   Beeps offered them fifty thousand dollars to handle the guy.  This time he wanted him dead and he told them.  He also told his son on the phone, and Nigro, while it was being recorded.

The recordings go on and on about setting up the murder and why.  They are between Beeps and Nigro, Beeps and his son and many with the informant. The two would-be hitmen would later turn out to be undercover FBI agents.  

They recorded a meeting at a bar with his son Anthony and two females, where they discussed starting a high end escort business.  They went over paperwork the girls would sign stating that they would not commit illegal acts.  Beeps wanted his son to open a bar as a front for the business.

The informant also did a couple of ‘buy walk’ cocaine deals.  A ‘buy walk’ is when law enforcement buys illegal drugs, pays for them, and lets the dealer go about business.  This is different when law enforcement does ‘buy busts’ and takes everyone down at the time of the deal.  They did a couple of deals with Anthony for two hundred grams of cocaine to strengthen the case against him.  Then the FBI upped the amounts to five hundred gram deals.

The informant got some great tapes of them discussing where they got the cocaine from and how it was brought into the country.

The six others arrested with Beeps Stango have all plead guilty and will be sentenced.

In the old days, a capo would be insulated from street dealings - and forget about having to “hire out” a killing.  The guys in any mafia crew would not get paid to murder - they just did what they were told to do.  Old age and repeated government assaults have weakened the family.

I doubt Beeps Stango will ever be a play on the street again.